Guitar update

[hmpf]

I still don't do more than ten minutes of practice a day, and I still don't know more than six chords, but I'm getting better at changing between those six chords. Wanted to get to a reasonable degree of accuracy and speed with all the chord changes that are possible with these six before I go on to the next new chords. I'm currently somewhere near 50 changes per minute for the changes I've been practicing the longest, and around 30 for the ones I've only been practicing for a couple of weeks. Or I was, when I last bothered to count; most of the time I don't bother.

I still don't know a single song, though. I don't have a capo (yet), so I'm limited to songs that *really* only consist of E, A, D, Em, Am and Dm, and I'm not sure how to find any. Let alone how to find songs that feature only those chords *and* that I like well enough to want to learn to play.

What worries me a bit is that my brain seems reluctant to attach sounds to motions. What I mean is, I don't automatically know in advance which sound will be produced when I, what's the verb here, fret(?) a chord - and, vice versa, when I have a sound in mind I don't automatically know which chord it is, let alone which finger motions would produce it. I feel like my brain *should* be attaching these two different types of information to each other by now, but it doesn't.

Then again, five-or-so weeks of practice at ten minutes a day or less probably simply isn't enough to produce that kind of automatic association, in someone of - at best - average (perhaps even slightly below average) musical talent. I seem to remember this kind of association came to me more quickly when I was learning the recorder - but I was two and a half decades younger then. (And also, maybe, the way sound and motion are connected when playing the recorder is a bit more intuitive? A lot of it, I seem to remember, was just kind of "lift/put down one finger for a higher/lower tone". Whereas with the guitar, a lot of the time you really rearrange your entire left hand on the fretboard for every new tone. And you have to remember how many strings to play with your right hand on top of that.)

Comments

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't have a professional musician level of talent, but I would probably be classed as having an above average level of musical talent - in particular I pick up the basics of instruments extremely quickly and while it's been a few years, I used to be pretty happy using a guitar to accompany songs with chords or simple fingerpicking.

What I will say is that I never managed to achieve the instinctive understanding of how to make "that sound in my head" with a guitar the way I did with other instruments I played with some confidence - cello, piano, fife, for instance. I'm sure part of that was due to lack of familiarity, but it just...sat in my head very differently and I think it's because it's not set out as cleanly because it's not focused on melody. Even piano, where you have left-hand accompaniment, I found it easier to divide the keyboard into octaves in my head, work out that if I want a chord based around this sound, I should probably try keys various intervals on either side of that. And the octave-chunks repeat along the keyboard. Similarly, a cello isn't based around octaves - it's fifths between strings, but they are based around adding a finger to make the pitch increase until there are no more fingers and then you go up to the next string. So again, a logical mental image of the "scales" of the sound is much easier, and on a cello, you're playing a tune, not trying to strum chords in accompaniment.

Ugh, I'm doing a terrible job of explaining this, but I think what I'm trying to get at is that the guitar doesn't have as user-friendly a set-up in terms of creating a sensible landscape in one's brain to focus on learning melodies, and even more complicated is the fact that you're generally not even trying to find "a note" but rather "a collection of notes that will sound good with this particular note". So instead of being able to find that note, you need to (a) find four to six different notes that, (b) are on the neck of an instrument that's not as logically laid out as it could be. Again I'm sure a guitar enthusiast would disagree with me, but that was my experience; other instruments I understood much more quickly and much more easily - you know, including stuff like when my friend taught me the basics of the cornet over the course of an afternoon.

Bluntly, you need an understanding of musical theory to know what notes you even want to choose for your chord, and then you can work out the easiest way to put your fingers on the neck to get it to make that sound.

The much easier way - at least from my perspective - was just to learn chords by rote and then strum around to decide which one sounded best. You're starting off with some good simple chords, but just...slowly expand you repertoire. And eventually it might be good to do things like learn how to use a capo to use easier chord shapes or to pick up a small amount of musical theory (like the smallllllll amount I still have) to understand what chords tend to go well together, but...this is all optional.

What I'd do is look up some songs you like on the internet with chord accompaniments. If you put "beginner" into the search, you'll probably find ones with simple chord suggestions. If you don't know the chord, look it up!

Just keep practising and learn through doing, but I would suggest you start learning songs because it really gave me motivation that very early on I could strum along to something and have it sound good.

And don't get hung up on not automatically being able to recognise the chords, or instinctively understand how to make up new ones, because that is WAY more difficult to do on a guitar than a recorder.

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't want to make up new chords. It would just be nice if my brain started associating, say, the finger position for E with the *sound* of the E chord. And so on. Basically, I'm still surprised by the sound every time I strum a chord. And that's obviously somewhat inconvenient if you want, at some point, to start improvising and maybe making up your own melodies... (which I always enjoyed doing).

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

I do intend to eventually learn some theory - or relearn what little I had of it some twenty years ago. (I actually had fairly decent music instruction at school, but I was never really interested enough to commit it all to longterm memory.) But it's probably a bit early for that right now. First, I'll learn a few more chords, and then start learning a few songs, and then...

Anyway, I'm still enjoying this immensely. I really love the kind of sounds that a guitar makes, and the way you can really feel the vibrations when you're playing. I'm having a slight problem with finding the proper position for sitting comfortably with it, though. It's surprisingly tricky - I feel like I always need to somehow get my right leg a bit higher, by putting my foot on something or by crossing my right leg over my left. Also, I'm afraid of playing too loudly, because my landlord lives just beneath me. So, at the moment, I try to play "inaudible guitar" - that's all right, though; if it was good enough for Thom Yorke it's good enough for me. *g*)

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

Also, yeah - (basic) piano is super-intuitive. I had occasional access to a piano and a keyboard at times during my childhood, and I taught myself to play stuff by ear, without any instruction, in a matter of hours.

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

Ah! I apologise for misunderstanding! Right, no I do get what you mean, but that will come with time, and possibly with learning more songs.

With regards to "inaudible guitar" obviously at the moment I imagine this would be financially impossible, but you can get a fairly cheap electric guitar (you know, relative to the fact that all musical instruments are kinda expensive) and instead of hooking it up to an amp, you can hook it up to a pair of headphones and then you really will be playing "silent" guitar! You know, if you really fall in love with the thing.

(Also, re: your recent post - I forbid you to reply if it is stressing you out and shall not take from a lack of response any indication of your levels of affection for me! ♥)

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've actually thought about an e-guitar - you can get them quite cheaply, and also, I'm not broke YET! But my acoustic is so lovely that I really want to use it, and also, having lived with an electric guitar player (the adjective applying to the guitar, not the player), I know that that isn't completely silent, either. And I'm really playing *very* quietly - I doubt that playing even an unplugged e-guitar would be more quiet. A lot of the time I'm barely touching the strings with my strumming hand - I'm not so much strumming as petting the strings like a fragile little kitten or something of that sort. :D The music I listen to on a regular basis is probably louder. (Generally speaking, losing my job will suck because it will make it even less likely I'll ever live in conditions where I can a) listen to music really *loudly*, b) make music myself, and c) hammer metal to my heart's content, without bothering any neighbours. Not that I can afford to live like that even now.)

As long as I'm mostly focusing on getting faster and more precise in my... fretting (heh. *Is* that a word? I mean, I know it's a word, but I'm not sure it is in *this* context?) I don't really need a lot of sound, really. When I start playing songs, of course, it will get a bit trickier.